General Hospital<\/em>\u2018s Jacob Young<\/strong> opened up for the first time about secretly battling an addiction for years.<\/p>\n \u201cI had some dental surgery done,\u201d Young, 46, shared on a recent episode of the \u201cImperfectly Perfect\u201d podcast<\/a>. \u201cAnd I ended up getting a prescription for Vicodin. This is something I\u2019ve never been completely open about. I started getting hooked on opioids and I went through seven years of my life wasted on opioids.\u201d<\/p>\n Young recalled \u201cjust needing to [feel] numb,\u201d claiming the pills were \u201cthe one thing that made me feel normal.\u201d He also claimed his drug use \u201cnever affected my work,\u201d adding, \u201cI always showed up, I always did my lines. I was always well-studied.\u201d<\/p>\n He continued: \u201cI was living a lie. I was living an absolute lie. There was no two ways about it. And I would show up pretending that I\u2019m completely normal, that everything is fine in my life, and then go home [and] realize that I just completely lied to everyone that entire day.\u201d<\/p>\n Young hid his issues from loved ones<\/a> \u2014 including wife Christen Steward<\/strong>, with whom he shares three kids \u2014 until he couldn\u2019t anymore.<\/p>\n \u201cNobody knew. Even my wife didn\u2019t know,\u201d he said. \u201cI finally broke down and told her the truth. I was like, \u2018Look, I\u2019m addicted. And I can\u2019t get off this because I don\u2019t want to get sick, but I need help.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Young was able to get clean after going into counseling. \u201cI wanted to get to the root of \u2018Why? Why am I needing to do this?\u2019\u201d he noted. \u201c[I was] working my way out of it \u2026 That was a journey, to get off of that. That was really tough.\u201d<\/p>\n Through therapy, Young was able to pinpoint how<\/a> his childhood influenced his eventual addiction to opioids. The actor was thrust into the public eye in 1997 after being cast on The Bold and the Beautiful. He grew up in poverty, claiming there were times when his family was \u201cliterally starving.\u201d After his father remarried, his stepmother \u201cquickly became like a second mom.\u201d<\/p>\n But when Young was 16, his stepmother died by suicide, which led him to \u201ca whole new understanding of who I was, why life exists, how things can seconds suddenly change in a second \u2026 I was going through stuff that I didn\u2019t realize that I was ever going to go through.\u201d<\/p>\n Professionally, Young was thriving, and his role on The Bold and the Beautiful scored him a Daytime Emmy nomination. He also started experimenting with recreational marijuana use.<\/p>\n \u201cI started smoking weed when I was like 14 years old,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I think that was one of the ways I was coping, right? I\u2019d hang out with my friends, we\u2019d go camp, chill by a river, fish \u2026 we\u2019d smoke our weed and hang out.\u201d<\/p>\n Following his time on The Bold and the Beautiful<\/em>, Young found success on General Hospital<\/em> before another role caused him to move to the East Coast.<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t even interested in alcohol until I got into my later mid-20s,\u201d Young recalled. \u201cBut as I got older and I was living in New York City \u2026 I was working on All My Children at the time, and you know, you have everything within three square blocks for the most part, right? And it became very easy because I wasn\u2019t driving, right? I was always taking a taxi or public transportation, and so [I] started getting into really drinking a lot more excessively.\u201d<\/p>\n
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